Last week, NBC Universal declined its right of first refusal on a new deal for SmackDown, instead focusing its efforts on retaining Monday Night Raw. Despite coming to terms with Fox, WWE reportedly had an offer with an even higher dollar amount from a third, unknown, network. What put Fox over the edge, despite the lesser dollar figure, was the network’s ability to co-promote the WWE product with its NFL and Major League Baseball broadcasts. Fox is paying the NFL $3 billion for Thursday Night Football, which would heavily advertise SmackDown if the network plans to air the WWE show the following night on the same network. Fox is also still negotiating with the UFC, and reportedly has offered up to $175 million per year for television rights, which would be less than WWE’s paycheck but UFC would also, theoretically, run less events on the network. At one point, Fox was after both Raw and SmackDown, offering WWE the chance to air Raw on the Fox Network and SmackDown on its Fox Sports 1 sports-only cable network, but NBC Universal has the right of first refusal to keep the show on its networks.
